News In Brief

June 14, 1984

San Salvador

Suspect Salvadorean unit is out, police official says

Col. Rinaldo Goelcher, director of the Salvadorean Treasury Police, said Tuesday that the S-2 intelligence unit in his agency has been dissolved. S-2 has been linked to death squads, although Colonel Goelcher says there has been no evidence to support the allegation. Its 100 agents have been sent to combat positions at isolated posts in the east, scene of some of the heaviest fighting in the government's 41/2-year-old war with leftist guerrillas.

A former S-2 director, Col. Jose Ricardo Pozo, was assigned to a post in Paraguay early this year after the US Embassy requested that he and two other military officers and several civilians be sent abroad.

Goelcher, who became director of the Treasury Police just before Jose Napoleon Duarte took office June 1, replaced Col. Nicolas Carranza. Colonel Carranza, who had been linked to death squads, was assigned to an embassy post in West Germany.